Summary of DELL INC - Yahoo! Finance

ITEM 2 - MANAGEMENT'S DISCUSSION AND ANALYSIS OF FINANCIAL CONDITION AND RESULTS OF OPERATIONS
All percentage amounts and ratios presented in this management's discussion and analysis were calculated using the underlying data in thousands. Unless otherwise indicated, all changes identified for the current-period results represent comparisons to results for the prior corresponding fiscal periods. Our fiscal year is the 52 or 53 week period ending on the Friday nearest January 31. The fiscal year ending February 1, 2013 ("Fiscal 2013") will be a 52 week period. Unless the context indicates otherwise, references in this management's discussion and analysis to "we," "us," "our" and "Dell" mean Dell Inc. and our consolidated subsidiaries. This management's discussion and analysis should be read in conjunction with our Annual Report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended February 3, 2012, and the Consolidated Financial Statements and related notes included in that report.

INTRODUCTION
We are a leading integrated technology solutions provider in the IT industry. We built our reputation through listening to customers and developing solutions that meet customer needs. We are focused on providing long-term value creation through the delivery of customized solutions that make technology more efficient, more accessible, and easier to manage. Our four customer-centric, global business segments are Large Enterprise, Public, Small and Medium Business ("SMB"), and Consumer. We also refer to our Large Enterprise, Public, and SMB segments as "Commercial."

A key component of our business strategy is to continue shifting our portfolio to products and services that provide higher-value and recurring revenue streams over time. As part of this strategy, we emphasize expansion of our enterprise solutions and services, which includes servers, networking, storage, and services. We believe the most attractive areas for profitable growth include data center and information management as well as client and cloud computing. We believe software will enhance our enterprise solutions, and accordingly, in early Fiscal 2013, we launched our newly formed software group to expand our ability to execute in strategic areas that are important to our customers. We now have four solutions groups to support our global business segments:
enterprise solutions, services, end-user computing, and software.

Emerging countries, which include a vast majority of the world's population, are attractive growth opportunities for technology expansion. In recent years, we have focused much of our investment in non-U.S. markets excluding Western Europe, Canada, and Japan, with a particular focus on BRIC, which consists of Brazil, Russia, India, and China.

Our strategic transformation has contributed to improvements in our operating margins over time. We employ a collaborative approach to product design and development in which our engineers, with direct customer input, design innovative solutions and work with a global network of technology companies to architect new system designs, influence the direction of future development, and integrate new technologies into our products. Through this collaborative, customer-focused approach, we strive to deliver new and relevant products and services to the market quickly and efficiently. For our client business, we have directed our development efforts towards streamlining our product portfolio and focusing on product leadership by developing next generation capabilities. We continue to invest in the enhancement of our sales and marketing functions. Over time, we have added new distribution channels, such as retail, system integrators, value-added resellers, and distributors, to expand our access to more end-users around the world.

We supplement organic growth with a disciplined acquisition program targeting businesses that will expand our portfolio of higher-margin enterprise solutions offerings. We emphasize acquisitions of companies with portfolios that we can leverage with our global customer base and distribution. Since the beginning of Fiscal 2012, we have acquired several businesses that extend our core capabilities in a variety of enterprise offerings, including storage, networking, systems management appliance, virtualized server, data center, and desktop solutions, and software-as-a-service application integration, as well as enabled expansion of our customer financing activities. We completed seven of these acquisitions in Fiscal 2013, including our acquisitions of SonicWALL, Wyse Technology, and Quest Software. For further discussion regarding our acquisitions, see Note 8 of the Notes to the Condensed Consolidated Financial Statements included in "Part I - Item 1 - Financial Statements."

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Presentation of Supplemental Non-GAAP Financial Measures

In this management's discussion and analysis, we use supplemental measures of our performance, which are derived from our consolidated financial information but which are not presented in our consolidated financial statements prepared in accordance with accounting principles generally accepted in the United States of America ("GAAP"). These financial measures, which are considered "non-GAAP financial measures" under SEC rules, include our non-GAAP gross margin, non-GAAP operating expenses, non-GAAP operating income, non-GAAP net income, and non-GAAP earnings per share. See "Results of Operations - Non-GAAP Financial Measures" below for more information and a reconciliation of each non-GAAP financial measure to the most directly comparable GAAP financial measure.

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